Viswanathan K's Thoughts

When it comes to Big Data, privacy and security, India’s view is totally different than that of the West. The difference is due to the answer to the following question – Do the benefits and applications of analyzing large data outweigh the privacy and security risks? And it’s not just India, all countries without pre-existing well-functioning systems look at data sets, AI and machine learning favourably since they enable better systems and better governance.   It reminded me of that term WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. It was used a lot to refer to the Western view of how things should be, how studies and research should be done etc is unconsciously skewed since they didn’t know or understand non-Western (or non-WEIRD) countries and cultures. Today, more and more people think that the Western views on privacy and security should be added to the list of WEIRD worldview topics , i.e., matters where Western views are inapplicable to non-WEIRD coun...

I was reading this description of the book, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh and it got me thinking: “How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past.” Atheism is considered an invention of the European Enlightenment? Really? Have they never heard of entire religions founded on the basis of atheism and agnostism (Jainism and Buddhism)?! But those religions are from the East. And most Westerners only know, well, the West. Daniel Kahneman even coined a term for this tendency to form conclusions based on what you see without checking if there are other things to look at: What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI)! The WYSIATI problem has been recognized in many psychology and social science “conclusions” based on tests done wi...